Indian teachers yearn to focus more on skill and personality development for their students

Business Wire India (3 September 2014 IT News Online (3 September 2014) MoneyLife (3 September 2014) The Telegraph, Calcutta (4 September 2014)Times of India (4 September 2014)

Indian teachers yearn to focus more on skill and personality development for their students

In mid-2014, Spire Research and Consulting collaborated with global education service provider Pearson for the second time, to conduct a study of 5,145 teachers in schools and higher education institutes across 247 cities in India. The study revealed that teachers ranked skill and personality development as the most important area to focus on for improving learner outcomes.

The Pearson-Spire study revealed that nearly 50 percent of students who had entered a classroom lacked the academic, vocational and cognitive skills requisite for that level. This implied that most learning environments were failing their students.

In spite of these sobering findings, most teachers (79 percent) still perceived a noted improvement in India’s learning environment over the past decade. These improvements were noted to have come about through the practical exposure gained by teachers, teaching combined with technology, teacher training on new methodologies as well as an improved curriculum and structured assessment criteria.

A majority (92 percent) of teachers felt that India’s assessment system focused primarily on examination results. On the other hand, 94 percent of the teachers personally used skill and personality development standards to measure their own students’ success as a learner. This was followed by job and higher education preparedness (83 percent) and the results of tests and exams (57 percent).

It remains to be seen whether the learning environment for Indian students will evolve to encompass a more holistic approach to education, one that places skill and personality development at its heart.